The 3 AM kitchen became ours.
Not by design. Not by architecture. By the accident of two people who couldn't sleep living on opposite sides of a deadbolt in a building at altitude. I'd hear his machine — still the terrible one, because he refused to throw it away even though my pour-over was three feet from it — and I'd unlock the door and walk down the hallway in bare feet and find him at the island in the same gray t-shirt and sweatpants and bare feet and the scene was becoming a pattern. Patterns are dangerous. Patterns are how you build a life without noticing you're doing it.
He was getting better. The coffee. Not good — I was years from letting him touch my espresso machine — but the pour-over was approaching drinkable. He measured the beans the way I'd shown him. He ground them too fine, and I corrected him every night, and the correction was becoming a ritual I looked forward to more than the coffee.
"Too fine," I said. Third night in a row.
"It tastes the same."
